I've never kept a note of the games I finish in one year before but I intend to do so this year. Here's what I've finished so far:

Fallout 3: Broken Steel DLC (360)

House of the Dead Overkill (Wii)

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii)

Resident Evil 5 (360)

Gears of War (360)

Bioshock (360)

Fight Night Round 3 (360)

Ironman (360)

CSI: Hard Evidence (360)

Kameo Elements of Power (360)

Call of Duty: World at War (360)

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage DLC (360)

My definition of "finish" is simply to have finished the main single player mode. There's very few games I try to get 100% on, but there are exceptions:

It's GTA IV, for anyone who hasn't played it. Now I've got the DLC for that to complete as well...

Hi eveyone. It's been a while since my last blog so I'll try to fill in the blanks over what I've up to for the past eight months. In the past week I decided it was time to get a PS3; I'd been saying I would as soon as the Dualshock controller was available so the new 80GB model was quite tempting. I've been enjoying the PS3 so far, but it's not replaced the 360 as my main games console.

So that's my current setup above. My other consoles also make regular appearances but it depends upon what I'm playing at the time. The majority of my gaming recently has been with a handful of games; GTA IV, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Assassin's Creed (all played on my 360).

My PS3 collection is pretty small just now as I only own Motorstorm and Ratchet and Clank Future. There's other PS3 games I'd like (Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo Prologue and Resistance to name a few) but I'm currently more psyched about the upcoming 360 releases; Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears 2 and Banjo Kazooie. There's so many good games coming out in the next couple of months that I'm gonna have to be picky about what I buy because I really can't afford them all (nor would I have time to play them).

Just now I'm finishing off GTA. I really would like to get 100% and the achievement that comes with it, the only thing putting me off is the street races which I'm not finding to be much fun. The other racers are either miles behind you (boring) or they catch you on the very last corner, flip your vehicle and leave you cursing that you ever started the race. Grrr.... But as you can see from the photo, revenge is delt out swiftly with the RPG, lol.

I've really enjoyed GTA IV although there's some stuff which I hope Rockstar can fix for the next game. Climbing ladders is broken, most of the time Niko shuffles around the ladder for five minutes before actually climbing it. The game feels quite different from previous GTA's but most of the stuff that was fun in previous games is still there. Just don't give up on the rather slow first island and you should enjoy this game.

The other game that took up a lot of my time was Oblivion. Despite owning Oblivion since I first got my 360, I only really got into it a few months ago. I think the overall scale of the game put me off a bit; I wasn't sure what to do next and didn't want to make decisions that would screw up elements of the game for me.

Of course, I shouldn't have worried, there's not much you can do to really screw up the game unless you happen across one of the glitches and then save afterwards. By the time I'd unlocked all the achievements I'd been playing Oblivion for just under 170 hours, which is pretty extreme even by my standards. The funny thing is I still haven't completely finished it; there's still loads of quests that I could do. Maybe one day I'll finish them all... maybe.

So that's about all from me for now. I'll try to get my next blog completed in under eight months, lol.

Later,

alxbly.

As you get older you'll find that there's one thing that you seem to have much less of and that's time. It hasn't always been like this. When I was younger time could be split into two distinct sections; there was school and there was fun. Sometimes you'd have some fun at school and occasionally school homework would eat into your fun but, apart from those rare exceptions, everything was pretty straightforward.

Now it's a different story. My work, family, friends, girlfriend, TV, forums, eBay, gaming and everything else all demand my time. Since I have less time than ever (or so it seems) I've had to make cutbacks. Now, it's not easy cutting back your gaming when you're a multi-console kind of guy like me and the console manufacturers don't make it any easier. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony insist on releasing great games much faster than I can play them, which creates a tension. Games line up on my shelves, all screaming to be played and flashing their titles at me (oo-er!). I have to calmly choose which will be the lucky one that I'll spend the night with.

And to further confuse matters, it seems that since I discovered the joys of online gaming I've completely forgotten what a single player game is. Nintendo and Microsoft did try their best to jog my memory when they threw a double whammy of Super Mario Galaxy and Bioshock at me, but I was already smitten with the Orange Box. These days Call of Duty 4's multiplayer has stolen a bit of that love but it's more the occasional mistress than the loving wife; a bit more intense and a lot more dangerous!

What I have found is that my games collector/player balance has been turned on it's head. In the past a large portion of my time was spent on eBay trying to find rare games, import titles and limited edition controllers. Now I spend hardly any time on eBay and a lot more time actually playing games. The thrill of finding a rare game has been replaced with a more sustainable thrill of playing games I genuinely enjoy.

So I guess I've come full circle, back to the thing that originally excited me about games. For me it was all too easy to get caught up in a collectors frenzy and I ended up buying games because of their status; "rare", "import", "valuable" or "limited edition". I found some real gems but also ended up buying some terrible games as well. I still drool over the rare, the valuable and the limited editions but now I think "will I ever play them"? And if the answer is no, they don't belong in my collection.